


as companionable as solitude

by eruthros



Category: Fringe, The X-Files
Genre: Community: femslash11, Crossover, F/F, Makeouts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-16
Updated: 2011-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:27:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eruthros/pseuds/eruthros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Walter waves his doughnut in the general direction of the desiccated corpses and the cocoon, spraying Broyles' coat with powdered sugar. "You know, this reminds me of Dana's description of prehistoric bug attacks some years ago."</p>
            </blockquote>





	as companionable as solitude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilacsigil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsigil/gifts).



> For [](http://lilacsigil.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**lilacsigil**](http://lilacsigil.dreamwidth.org/) as part of [](http://femslash11.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**femslash11**](http://femslash11.dreamwidth.org/). Thanks to [](http://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**thingswithwings**](http://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/) for beta and for suggesting "red menace" when I was stumped.

Walter waves his doughnut in the general direction of the desiccated corpses and the cocoon, spraying Broyles' coat with powdered sugar. "You know, this reminds me of Dana's description of prehistoric bug attacks some years ago." He crouches down to poke at the cocoon; Olivia notices that he hasn't even put on any gloves. "Hmm. Yes. Very familiar. Is there active logging in this forest?"

"Uh, yes sir," the officer standing guard says. "Three loggers have been missing all weekend, and we thought this might be them. Except that they look _mummified_."

"Right!" Walter says, pivoting on his heel, "please take these bodies to my lab. And, Agent Dunham, I will need Dana's complete files, which I believe Belly may have secreted away in Massive Dynamic."

"Dana's complete files," Olivia repeats. "Which one do we need?"

"Well," Walter says, "we just need one of them. But the whole set couldn't hurt."

* * *

"Ah, Agent Dunham!" Nina Sharp stands and holds out her hand; Olivia has to shake it, but she steps back afterwards, putting the desk between them again.

"We found three mummified bodies in a forest in upstate New York," Olivia says, right to the point, "and Walter believes that we need Dana's complete files."

"Dana's complete - oh, of course," Sharp says. "He just has the surviving records from the Bureau? Well, William kept most of them; he did keep tabs on most government work on fringe science back then, even when it became quite difficult. We digitized everything five years ago, but I imagine that Walter would probably prefer paper copies."

"That sounds - good." She's surprised every time when Nina Sharp is so helpful, so solicitous. De facto head of the biggest company in the world, and she's meeting with an FBI agent to talk about photocopies, and she's giving Olivia everything she wants - not just one report, but all of them.

Sharp touches the screen on her desk. "Mark, could you bring up the file boxes from 28C?"

"Of course, Ms. Sharp."

Olivia waits in silence; Sharp is sitting back in her desk, watching her over her mug. She hasn't gone back to her work.

Sharp's assistant wheels a set of file boxes in on a hand truck.

"Thank you, Mark, that will be all." Sharp gestures toward the boxes in invitation. "You should check them before you go."

Olivia walks over to them, lifts the lid of the top box and rummages through the blue folders underneath. She picks one at random and flips it open to find full-color pictures of something labeled a giant humanoid flukeworm.

"Right," she says, shoving it back into the box. "Looks like the right files to me."

* * *

"Astrid. Something is wrong. I am telling you to take my gun away." Olivia keeps her hands flat on the cool metal counter, away from her gun; she wants to reach out for it, run to a corner and stand with her back to the wall. She watches carefully as Astrid picks up the gun and puts it in the safe in the corner, keeps staring hungrily at it until Astrid relocks the door. Peter keeps pacing behind her, just in the corner of her vision, and it makes her shoulders itch.

She presses her hands down harder into the counter and spits out, "Stop standing behind me."

Walter stands in front of her, completely still and calm. "Agent Dunham. I take it you are feeling - unwell?"

"I've been - angry." She laughs harshly. "Since I arrested Zhenya Bozhidar. And suspicious. I think you did this. I know you didn't, but I think you did this. And I want to punch you until your face is bloody." Her hands spasm on the counter; she locks her elbows harder. "And I have physical symptoms. Swollen black lymph nodes. Night sweats. Tell me you know what this is, Walter."

Walter hesitates, then nods. "I believe I know what has caused it. Agent Dunham. I am going to go get a file from the other room; it will take a few minutes, but I will return with it. Would you like to be restrained?"

"No," she says, sharply. Then, "Yes. Probably." She lets Astrid take her arm, guide her into a chair, and close straps over her wrists. As soon as she's restrained she lets go, stops fighting it, feels her hands shape themselves into fists.

Walter returns with a blue folder and pulls a chair up next to hers. "I thought I recognized the black nodules from one of Dana's files," he says. "A prehistoric relative of the tapeworm, I believe, which parasitizes a host and induces violence and paranoia."

"How could you tell the difference?" Peter says.

"Peter!"

"Sorry." He looks over at her. "Sorry."

"None of the previous victims of the worm were able to identify or modify their behavior," Walter says. "I believe that we should once again be grateful for your special skills, Agent Dunham."

"Well," she says, through gritted teeth. "That's great. But what are we going to do about it?"

" _If_ I have interpreted Dana's descriptions correctly," Walter says, riffling through the folder, "introduction of another worm should cause them to kill each other, leaving you uninfected." He pulls his chair closer to hers. "So, Agent Dunham, do you know of anyone else who might be infected?"

* * *

"Huh," says Olivia. "Completely drained of blood?"

"Entirely exsanguinated, Agent Dunham. Not a drop of blood left in his system."

"And this is where you tell me about fang marks on the neck and the long history of vampiric activity in this area."

"Not at all," Walter says. "I wouldn't deny the possibility of vampirism in this case, though I've never observed it myself - porphyria, yes, and that poor fellow I met at the institution who believed he was Dracula, and I did once come across a rabid physicist who had been misdiagnosed as a vampire - but there's just one puncture mark on the jugular, so either we're dealing with a one-toothed vampire or someone using a syringe, or perhaps, given the size of the wound, a straw. Though of course his shoes were untied, which is suggestive."

"Right," she says, shoving a hand through her hair and staring down at the floor. "I'll consider the results inconclusive." She flips through her notebook. "I've been taking witness statements; nobody seems to have seen him after he checked into the hotel, except a pizza delivery man named Ronald Strickland, who claims to have left Claude Stephenson alive and well at six pm last night. Nothing unusual about the room or situation."

"Yes, yes, let me know if you need anything more," Walter says, waving vaguely in the direction of the door as he bends down to the microscope again.

She's halfway to her car before he catches up to her, flushed and disheveled. He's holding one of the blue Dana files open in front of him, the pages fluttering in the breeze. "Agent Dunham? Did you say Ronald Strickland?"

* * *

Olivia stares at Peter through the cell door. He's just sitting there, smiling politely, but occasionally she sees the faintest black shimmer move across his eyes.

Walter and Astrid hurry in, each of them carrying several bags and boxes.

"You said he experienced a sudden behavioral change? Please describe the progression of the symptoms."

"Hello, dad," Peter says. "Going to try to save your son again? You'll fail this time, you have to know that."

"I'm not talking to you while you're in that body," Walter says, and turns his back on the cell.

"We tracked several of the spree killers back to a single gas station in Hoboken," Olivia begins. "We were interviewing the station attendant, who identified two of the men from photos. I was on the phone with you; I thought you might want some environmental samples. Peter stepped in a puddle and froze, and I saw what appeared to be worms under the surface of his skin, and his eyes turned black. And then he took out a matchbook and tried to blow up the gas station, so I handcuffed him and brought him back here."

"And you touched me, Olivia - can you be sure that you're not infected?" Peter says.

Olivia sighs. "And he's been doing that for the last half hour."

"I see!" says Walter. "Intriguing - it appears to be a form of possession."

"Possession," Astrid says flatly.

"Not supernatural possession, of course, but some sort of sentient virus, perhaps, or some genetically modified parasites."

Olivia leans against the wall, exhausted. "Look, Walter, I have accepted a lot in my years here, I have dealt with alternate universe doubles and people who can kill me with their brains, but I can't start suspecting every puddle of secretly carrying evil viruses."

"Why not?" Walter asks, his eyebrows drawn together. "Statistically speaking, they all do."

She pauses. "Evil mind-control viruses."

"Nonetheless, I believe that may be what happened to Peter; it reminds me of a particular threat Dana faced some years ago. And while I don't have a cure, continual exposure to cool temperatures has slowed the progression of the disease in previous cases. Does the FBI have access to a cold storage room?"

* * *

"Let me out!" Peter pounds the door. "It's too cold in here, I'm fine, let me _out_!"

"We'll let you out as soon as we've figured out the problem, son." Walter shakes his head sadly and restacks the files on the table. "It's too bad we can't find Dana; her work on a similar viral infection would be invaluable. And she's survived the virus herself, though her notes on the cure are unfortunately incomplete."

Olivia glances down at the file that Walter's holding open, and then pulls it toward herself.

"Wait. I recognize this picture. Dana Scully?"

"Yes, yes, of course," Walter says testily.

"I took classes from Agent Dana Scully at the Academy," Olivia says, glancing over at Astrid. "I think she's still there."

"Yeah, I had her for forensic investigations a couple of years ago," Astrid says. "Most difficult class at the Academy, everybody says, if only because of the pictures, though if I'd known I'd be dealing with exploded corpses later in life I might've been more blasé about them. And I started a specialized training program with her last year - after I started doing autopsies with Walter."

Olivia grins at her. "Does she still come into class completely put together, and then ruin it five minutes in by pulling her hair back into the messiest ponytail you've ever seen?"

"Yes!" Astrid says. "And we called her the Red Menace - that's probably been around for a while."

"So did we! I modeled myself after her for years," Olivia confesses. "I mean, who else was there?"

Walter is clutching the files to his chest. "You've known Dana Scully for _ten years_? And you never thought to _tell me_?" He hasn't looked so betrayed since they stopped stocking red vines in the vending machines in the lobby.

"I'm sorry, Walter, I didn't know she'd ever worked on pattern events," Astrid says. "I thought she was just a forensic specialist."

"Just a forensic specialist!" Walter throws his hands in the air, practically vibrating. "Dana was one of the foremost government specialists on fringe science for ten years. She was one of two agents working on pattern events pre-Fringe Division. And to think I've been working from incomplete _files_ this whole time - and you were going to see her every afternoon for tea and cookies!" He waves an accusatory finger at Astrid, and then shifts to wave it at Olivia as well. "And she was practically a fringe event herself! If nothing else, we should have interviewed her about the experiments she endured!"

"I'll give her a call, Walter," Astrid says, placating. "Will Peter keep until tomorrow?"

Walter eyes the thermostat. "I think we should have several days at current temperatures, though you could, of course, ask Dana yourself!"

He storms off towards his office, and Astrid goes outside to phone, leaving Olivia alone with Dana's files. Agent Scully's files. She's glanced over some of them before, when Walter handed her documentation of man-eating funguses or robotic cockroaches, but she'd never thought of them as Fringe Division cases before, as assignments that FBI agents would have gone out to investigate.

She tries to fit Agent Scully into the Fringe world: professional, competent, cool Agent Scully doing autopsies next to Walter, pointing out familiar parasites and strange metabolic processes. Agent Scully fighting killer shadows and evil computers. Agent Scully walking beside her into threatening labs, her gun in her hands. Agent Scully, who had been there and done it all before - even the horrible parts, even the experimentation and the lies and the betrayal.

Olivia can't imagine talking about alternate-universe doubles and abductions and experimentation, but she thinks she'd like to sit down with Agent Scully for a while.

She wouldn't have to explain anything.

* * *

Astrid escorts her into Walter's lab the next day. Agent Scully looks exactly like Olivia remembered her: calm, collected, professional. Her hair is greyer now, though, and there are wrinkles around her mouth. She's wearing the same kind of pantsuit she always wore to teach, with a trenchcoat over it instead of a white doctor's coat.

She realizes that she's staring. "Agent Scully?" Olivia holds out a hand. "I don't know if you remember me, but I took your forensic investigations class at the Academy several years ago."

Scully's handshake is firm and decisive. "I'm afraid I don't remember most of my students, Agent Dunham. It's a pleasure to meet you again; you come up quite frequently in Agent Farnsworth's case reports."

"Please. Call me Olivia."

Walter rushes up from the other side of the lab and grabs one of Scully's hands in both of his. "Oh, Dana - Agent Scully, it's a great pleasure to meet you - I'm a huge fan of your work, well, most of your work - but they told me you were retired."

"I was," Scully says. "It didn't work out."

Walter threads his arm through hers and leads her to the paper-covered table. "We have been reading your reports, but the descriptions of the black oil virus are confusing at best. Is it prehistoric? Or man-made? Or alien?"

"It's - complicated," she says. "Have you identified the strain yet? Many of them were purportedly destroyed, although that's never seemed to make much of a difference."

She pauses in front of the table. "Oh," she says, reaching out and touching one of the photos, "I didn't know these were still around - the Bureau copies were all burnt or destroyed."

"Massive Dynamic keeps a copy of just about everything," Olivia says. "I try not to think too much about how they got it."

Scully shakes her head. "I should have known there'd be copies somewhere - we were being watched by just about everyone back then."

Walter claps his hands to draw their attention. "Well!" he says, "now that we've all been introduced, let's start saving Peter."

* * *

Walter runs what tests he can from outside the freezer; he fusses about the accuracy until Scully tells him that the virus can choose to infect anyone the host touches.

"Until the biohazard suits arrive, we all have to stay on this side of the door," she says. "And we just have to hope that the new design will be more effective. To be honest, your tests probably won't establish much; black oil is sentient and can present as any suite of symptoms it likes, or as none at all."

"How did you make your cure, Agent Scully?" Astrid asks. "I mean, we've all heard that you had it once, but nobody seems to know what happened."

"I didn't make it," she says. "The people who modified the black oil made a vaccine that happened to work as a cure. This version is probably genetically engineered, and with any luck the lab will have an antidote, if we can figure out who made it."

"There are too many possibilities!" Walter says. "I can name a hundred labs that might have done this, and we don't have time to check them all."

Scully gestures to the stack of files on the side of the table. "All the people I know who were in that game have been dead or missing for years; I won't be much help to you there. You might be able to do something with a blood sample, but if the oil is a different variant it may not do anything."

"At least it's something to _try_ ," Walter says, sourly. "If you would roll up your sleeve, please."

Olivia watches Scully shrug off her jacket, unbutton the cuffs of her shirt and roll them all the way up, and hold out her arm. Scully stares at Walter as he approaches her with a syringe in hand, keeps watching him while he draws blood. She holds herself with the same wariness that Olivia feels in herself when she's letting Walter poke and prod at her, and when he's done, she rolls her sleeve back down but doesn't button the cuffs.

Olivia shakes her head to clear it. "What if we approach this from another angle? Peter and I only tracked some of the killers back to that gas station; if we can find another location in common, we can identify products and distributors they have in common, which might lead us back to the originating company."

"Yes!" says Astrid, sliding her rolling chair over to her computer. "I'm on it - I've got a common-locations algorithm that I can run on the credit card records of people with black oil symptoms. If we're lucky, there will be several identifiable sites of different types, and we'll be able to narrow down the distributors fairly quickly."

Olivia grins at Agent Scully. "This is the part where Astrid does amazing things with computers, and Walter synthesizes new compounds from your blood, and you and I go and get coffee."

"Ah," Scully says. "I must admit, I like the way the division has grown. I used to have to get my own coffee _and_ synthesize the new compounds." She swings her jacket and coat back on, buttons everything up again until she's the same woman Olivia took classes from. "Lead the way to the good stuff, Agent Dunham; the coffee at my hotel is undrinkable."

"You really can call me Olivia."

"I'll remember that, Agent Dunham," Scully says.

* * *

They walk in silence through the university, fallen leaves crunching under their feet.

They're rounding a corner when Olivia clears her throat and asks the question she's been trying to work around to all day. "If it's not too personal a question - why did you leave the Fringe Division? Because I don't think I could stop doing this. I see the problems, and I want to fight them, and I want to fix them. I want to keep saving the world. And I'm _good_ at it."

"I didn't believe in any of this when we started, but I saw a great many things that I couldn't deny, no matter how much I wanted to. And I just - got tired of it; there were only two of us working on the X-Files then, and we didn't have backup, and we lost all the time. We lost the records, we lost the evidence, we lost the criminals, we lost the funding, we lost our families, and we lost each other. Over and over. I couldn't keep fighting to tell everyone the truth, but I thought, I can still teach new agents to believe the evidence, regardless of which way it points. They can do it." She shrugs. "I know it's different now."

"You could come back," Olivia says, "if you ever wanted to. I could convince Broyles to bring you on as a consultant, if you don't want to do field work anymore. You've saved my life four times, by my count, without even being here. I'd like to have you on my team in case it happens again." She imagines Scully sitting beside her when she was infected with the tapeworm, Scully putting her hand on her arm and saying, slowly and calmly, that everything would be fine.

"I'll think about it," Scully says, her voice conveying no, absolutely not. Olivia wilts a little under her gaze. Scully pulls out a business card, flips it over and scribbles on the back. "My cell phone number. Call me anytime if you want to talk."

Olivia slides it into her wallet. "Thanks. I appreciate that."

"I really do mean anytime," Scully says. "I still live alone; you'll only be disturbing me and my dog. And I know how the job is, Agent Dunham."

"Not exactly nine to five," Olivia says.

"There's something about the creatures that haunt the night," Scully says.

They walk the last block in silence.

* * *

Astrid calls while they're walking back to the lab. "I've got three common locations - two gas stations and an auto parts store. I'm guessing motor oil."

"Already?" Olivia glances at her watch. "They've probably still got the gas station closed off; I'll call Broyles and ask them to rush process every brand of motor oil the gas station sells."

She waves an apologetic hand at Scully as she continues through a rapid sequence of phone calls, promising dire consequences should anyone at the lab break sterile procedure.

"Do you want to come along?" she asks Scully.

"I'll stay in the van with Walter," Scully says, "in case you need someone to identify the vaccine."

"You really could come with us; your experience would be a big help."

Scully shakes her head. "I haven't been a field agent for ten years, Agent Dunham."

"You still carry a gun," Olivia says.

"Well," Scully smiles suddenly, looking completely unlike the Red Menace that she always was in class, "I did your job for ten years. I'm violent and paranoid."

"So I'm sure you still get out to the range."

"Agent Dunham, I don't want to get sucked in again," Scully says, gently. "And you seem to have the rest of it under control."

And they do: it takes the lab thirty minutes to get them the results - "we recognized it right away when it tried to climb out of the bottle" - and Olivia's team hits the oil company's research center forty-five minutes later, taking the building without shots fired. She calls Walter and Scully in, and indicates the appropriate lab. "The staff are all, unfortunately, in cells or morgues around the county; they seem to have been infected early on. But there might still be something useful in here."

Scully pulls out a pair of reading glasses and frowns at the text on the drawers around the lab. "This one," she says. "It's similar to the one they used on me. Which means you need to administer it within the next two days."

"Not a problem, Dana," Walter says, taking the vials gingerly and striding out the door. "Agent Broyles! I need a ride to the freezer!"

Scully stays behind in the lab for a moment, looking around at the equipment. Olivia waits in silence until Scully shakes her head and looks up at her.

"Thank you for your assistance," Olivia says, the words awkward and uncomfortable in her mouth.

"Not at all, Agent Dunham. Call me anytime. I'll just go find my ride back to the hotel."

They shake hands again, and then Scully turns and walks out the door, her trenchcoat billowing out behind her.

Olivia misses her already.

* * *

She calls Scully just a few weeks later. She feels a little bit bad about it; she tells Walter and Peter that she's going home to have some tea, that she doesn't want any company, but she knows she's going to call Scully. It means having a direct line to someone who might understand; she's not going to pass that up.

"Agent Dunham!" Scully says. "Something urgent?"

"I'm afraid so," she says. "I think it might be related to one of your cases - the insect that controlled people in a zombie-like state. But I'm the only one who can see them, so far, and we can't find the insect, and people are starting to give me that look, you know the one, where they start to wonder if you've lost it." She takes a deep breath, holds it. "Walter and Astrid and Broyles still believe me, I think, even though they can't see anything, but we can't do anything about it if we can't find the monster."

Scully's voice is suddenly sharper, more attentive. "I can be there in about four hours, Agent Dunham. I have some additional files on Greg Pincus that might be of use. And at the very least I can flash a credential to keep you out of an institution. I'll take care of the flight if you find me a hotel."

"I have a spare room," Olivia says, relieved. "If it would be easier."

Scully doesn't even hesitate. "Fine. That would be safer for you anyway. I'll be there at about two thirty. See you then."

She answers the door four hours later with her gun in her hand. "Hi," she says, and then, seeing Scully's amused expression, "sorry. I've been attacked too much to trust the doorbell. Please come in."

"I do it too," Scully says. "I didn't used to, but - well. You know the sort of thing that happens."

* * *

They've got files spread out all over the table in Olivia's apartment. Scully's tapping her pencil against the table, marking the locations of the zombies on a map. She tied her hair back with a pencil while reading one of Olivia's reports, and wisps of it have escaped to stick to her neck, her forehead, her cheeks. Olivia's distracted by it every time she looks up: Agent Scully, with her professional suits and her cutting smile, sitting crosslegged on her couch in a plaid shirt and sweatpants, collating information about secret zombies.

"You really don't remember me?" Olivia asks suddenly, hoping for a different answer.

"No, Agent Dunham."

" _Olivia_ ," she says again, disappointed, and tries to go back to her files.

"That's just what I tell all the ones who want to be teacher's pet," Scully says, glancing up at her through her eyelashes. Her smile's a little knowing, wicked.

"I would never - "

"'Excuse me, Agent Scully, I'm working on a paper on decomposition rates for another course and I was hoping I could come by your office to talk about it,'" Scully says, suddenly fidgety and hesitant. "'I've read your work, of course, but I was hoping that you would expound on one of your recent cases.'"

"Oh," Olivia breathes, jerking back and feeling the blush rise up her neck. "I never meant - I - "

"It's all right," Scully says, stopping Olivia with a gentle hand on her forearm. "It happens from time to time. There aren't that many of us in the Academy."

"Women?" Olivia says, and then "oh," again, and it's just the way it feels when she solves a case, when the last piece turns out to have been upside down and backwards, and suddenly everything makes a different kind of sense.

She looks at Scully again, really looks at her smile and her casual clothes, at the fact of her sitting on Olivia's couch, at her hand on Olivia's arm and her thumb on Olivia's wrist.

Olivia reaches out with her other hand, brushes the sticky hair off of Scully's face, leaves her hand on her cheek.

"I think I would like to kiss you, Agent Scully," she says, leaning forward, not taking her eyes off of Scully's face.

"Under the circumstances, Olivia," Scully says, parting her lips, "you should call me Dana."

* * *

"I don't like it when people undress me," Scully says, the moment they're sitting together on the bed. "But I'd like to help you with your clothes, if that's all right."

"Yes," Olivia says, and swallows hard. "Yes. Of course." She holds her arms apart to give Scully access, and then pauses. "Oh. Hang on just a - " she pulls her gun out of the holster and slides it into the drawer in the nightstand. "Okay. Sorry."

Scully's smiling at her when she turns back around. "You don't have to apologize for anything." Her hands are already sliding under the hem of Olivia's tank top, skimming the underside of her breasts as she tugs it over Olivia's head. She tosses it onto the chair in the corner, shifts forward, and licks Olivia's neck, her jugular, up to her mouth where she kisses her once, twice.

Olivia watches and keeps her hands to herself as Scully pulls off her plaid shirt without unbuttoning it, getting it caught in the pencil through her hair, and fighting to disentangle them. Scully unsnaps her bra one-handed, shuffles out of her pants and underwear, unsnaps her ankle holster and sits back down, naked. She lifts the holster in one hand. "Other nightstand?"

"Other nightstand," Olivia agrees, and watches Scully stretch across the bed to reach it. "If you can sleep on the left."

"Oh, we're skipping right to sleep, are we?" Scully asks, and Olivia shakes her head, leaning back on her hands, waiting for Scully to start to strip her again, to unzip her pants and slide them off.

"Can I touch you?" she asks, looking down at Scully's back, bent over her thighs.

"Yes," Scully says. "Please." She's tugging Olivia's underwear down her legs, pausing to caress her thighs, to run her hands across Olivia's knees, to kiss her stomach.

Olivia feels scars when she slides her hands around to the nape of Scully's neck; she pretends not to notice, and she thinks her face is perfectly composed, but Scully reaches back to hold her hand there. "I did your job for ten years," she says, smiling ruefully. "And I lost all the time. But you don't have to avoid them; none of them will bother me."

Olivia clears her throat. "Mine either," she says. "Except - I don't like to be pushed against walls."

Scully's smiling at her from the foot of the bed. "I'll remember that." She gets up carefully, lies down a few inches from Olivia and holds out a hand. "Come on," she says. "We'll work it out together."


End file.
